


I Don't Mean It, Honest.

by RacheTanz



Category: Sam & Max
Genre: 3rd person POV that skews to either side when it's convenient, Arguments, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, basically 1 one-shots, i feel like this is really ooc but im subjecting you all to it anyways, idk writing this made me sad but i wanted to do it lol, it's all very bittersweet, mutual pining but they both think it's one-sided, nearly a breakup, neither of them is coping well; neither of them wants to admit it really, part 2 happens much later and is also shorter, season 3 spoilers kinda, sort of sam/max but also not quite?, trying to talk through trauma, uhhhhh i dont actually like either of these but w/e hope yall enjoy it even tho i cant-
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-06-30 14:50:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19855450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RacheTanz/pseuds/RacheTanz
Summary: Everything feels wrong.





	1. I Don't Mean It, Honest

**Author's Note:**

> im here to hurt ya and imonna apologize preemptively for it
> 
> (sorry)

Sam flops down on his bunk with an exhausted wheeze. It was a long, long day, and he turns his head to peer up and out the window, watching the city skyline for a moment as he starts to relax. Finally the adrenaline from their case is beginning to wear off, and his eyes slowly slide closed. Not too long after, he’s snoring lightly, one foot still hanging off the bed; the room is dark save for the pale blue moonlight, until the bedroom door eases open, casting a light yellow glow and rabbit-y silhouette onto the snoring dog until the lagomorph in the doorway quietly flicks off the hall light, wary of waking his partner. He eases the door shut, sliding into the room before tiptoeing to their bunk bed and carefully lifting Sam’s foot to put his leg onto the mattress. The last thing anybody wants is to wake up with a cold, numb foot. For a moment he considers just climbing into his own bunk like usual, but he hesitates, eyeing the snoring dog. Does he seem cold? He’s probably cold. He was too tired to get under the blankets, and now he’s lying on top of them, so he’s going to be cold. There’s only one thing he could do for that, and it’s not lifting his partner up because he’s definitely not strong enough to do that (he probably actually is). Instead Max stealthily clambers up into Sam’s bunk, taking care not to let the bed-frame creak too much, then starts to clamber over his sleeping partner— 

“Max?” The lagomorph flinches, spooked by the sudden groggy voice of his best friend coming from beneath him. “What are you doing?”

“Oh!” His voice crackles with surprise, “Y-You’re awake!” He laughs uneasily, knowing he comes off as very, very guilty of something nefarious (when in reality, he’s only guilty of something embarrassing). He moves to scrabble backwards but Sam pins him to the wall beside the bed with one hand.

“You weren’t going to _set me on fire_ or something again, _were you_?” He growls, a little irritated. His lip curls reflexively and the lagomorph blinks at the moonlight glinting off his partner’s teeth.

“No.” Max answers honestly, then grins impishly. “I didn’t consider that, actually…”

“ **Don’t**.” Sam snaps, letting him go and rolling onto his side, halfway face-down. He expects Max to just go off and do whatever he pleases, so he shuts his eyes again, ready to fall back asleep. After a moment or two, something bumps into him, and his eyes fly open again to see Max wriggling under his arm. Part of him wants to ask what the hell is happening but the overwhelming majority is too tired. Shutting his eyes for the third time now, he reasons he’s likely already sleeping and this is some kind of bizarre dream. He drops off into sleep again easily, but unlike before, his dreams are anything but pleasant. 

_It’s dark again, and he’s sitting on the broken-up pavement in front of their old office. His eyes are tired, his brain is tired, everything about him is tired. The ground shakes slightly and more little pebbles are dislodged from the gaping fissure tearing their street and his heart in twain, footsteps of the behemoth who was his partner rattling the window-panes, and if it weren’t so important for him to keep his cool he’d break down sobbing. Nothing is working, all everyone wants to talk about now is how to_ **_kill_ ** _Max, and he’s never felt so damned_ **_useless_** _._

 _But he can’t give in to the hopelessness. He knows his partner is still in there, he knows Max doesn’t_ **_really_ ** _want this—and he’s the only one who does. He always has been. Max always fought his battles for him, ever since they’d met, and now it’s his turn to step up to the plate and fight for Max, even if he’ll probably have to fight Max himself to do that. But that’s kinda how it’s always been, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He stands up wearily, sighing, and peers into the star-flecked sky. Everything about this sucked, but it’d be alright in the end like usual, wouldn’t it?_

_…_

_Except it wouldn’t. And he knows that, looking back, but he knows he has to play it out the same nonetheless. It’s always like this, and he finds himself wondering how many times he’ll retrace his steps in his dreams, wandering broken dim streets he hasn’t seen since that awful day. He wishes his brain had gotten stuck on one of their less heartbreaking cases, like that one time they exorcised the supermarket. That was fun—they got free food out of that one, and Max had a blast driving the firetruck on the way home. But no, his brain is stuck like a skipping record on the one case he’d rather have_ **_never_ ** _happened, the one that makes his heart twist up in a way he hadn’t thought it ever could._

 _Every time he dreamed it, there was no happy ending, not like real life. The fact that this felt so probable—more believable than reality—was what_ **_really_ ** _sucked. He stood and stared at the decapitated Statue of Liberty, hat clenched in his paws, but there was no elevator sound behind him no matter how hard he strained his ears. Max wasn’t coming back. He was gone. And Sam felt… nothing. Or maybe it was a deep enough sadness that it felt like nothing—he couldn’t even cry. Either way, it was_ **_painful_** _; he felt hollow, and raw like a skinned knee, a sort of lingering sting so pervasive he wondered if he’d ever feel anything else again, and he wondered if there was even any damn point to being alive without his lifelong partner—they’d so rarely been apart, what was he going to do? Where would he go? He didn’t have an answer and dammit, he didn’t want one. Life without Max was no life at all. But why would he come back, anyways? How was it even possible? The dream felt more real—So many things about Max coming back didn’t make any sense. Wasn’t it some kind of paradox? How had he even managed to know where to go, exactly? And why had he? He was always the more confident of the two, even if he were less competent. Why bother? Wasn’t Sam’s morality some kind of dead weight, to him? He’d be a monster, sure, but… he never seemed opposed to that._

“Sam?”

_His dreaming mind doesn’t register the voice, too caught-up in its own vaguely emo nightmare. He looks down at the ground beneath his feet, feeling like a weight is pressing down on his shoulders. It aches. He gently sets his hat down on the stone wall before him, the railing meant to keep people from falling into the water, and sighs. He almost wishes Max hadn’t nobly sacrificed himself, and had just taken out the entirety of New York, instead. He’d rather have died alongside him than be doomed to forever feeling like his better half has been torn from him._

“Sam.”

_Now it catches his attention. His head snaps to where the elevator was—should be—but sees nothing. Confused, he looks around, wondering where that came from. Is this some sort of cruel joke? Will he never see Max again, doomed to hallucinate his voice calling his name for the rest of eternity? He may as well jump off a bridge right now if that’s the case—_

“Sam!” His eyes fly open, disoriented, and it takes him a moment to collect himself. Max is sitting right in front of him, one hand on Sam’s head, very gently cupped around the spot where his ear joins his skull. He’s staring down with a concerned look, glancing from one of Sam’s eyes to the other and back again. “Are you okay?”

It takes Sam a minute to register that his face is oddly wet, and his eyes are burning. He impulsively rubs his face, still a bit out-of-sorts, and the lagomorph withdraws his hand in an almost embarrassed manner. “Yeah, of course I’m fine, Sam—I mean, Max.” 

“You started crying in your sleep,” Max states dubiously, raising an eyebrow. 

“Just had another dream that the Fudgy-Freeze factory shut down, is all,” Sam lies, rolling over to not face his partner anymore. “Sorry if I woke you up. Feel free to slap me for it in the morning.” 

There’s a long pause before Max mutters, “Right,” then settles down behind Sam, but he doesn’t sleep. Sam doesn’t, either, feeling oddly shaky; he hopes the tremors aren’t obvious from Max’s perspective but they must be because he feels small rabbit hands gently petting his head a mere few minutes later. Part of him hates when the lagomorph does this, but the other part adores the feeling; it stirs up a whirlwind of emotions he doesn’t want to deal with, _ever_ , yet at the same time the dumb dog part of his brain just wants to wag its tail and drool. Max is well aware of that, unfortunately—well, minus the ‘complicated feelings’ thing, thank god—and tends to use it to his advantage, particularly in getting Sam to calm down when he won’t open up about what’s bothering him. Clearly his lie wasn’t effective at all but at the moment he finds himself not really caring, seized with the realization that he once thought this would never happen again— he’d never even _see_ Max again, let alone feel his fuzzy grimy hands gently kneading his scalp—and he realizes he can’t just pretend this isn’t happening. That doesn’t work. The nightmares aren’t going away no matter how much he ignores them. Sam rolls back over and grabs hold of Max suddenly, earning a startled yelp as he drags the lagomorph into a hug. Everything’s become overwhelming again and Sam takes a deep shaky breath, struggling to keep his composure; Max freezes, startled, then relaxes, trying to rub Sam’s arm reassuringly despite the death-grip bear-hug he’s stuck in. For a second they’re both silent until Max starts, “Uh, Sam?”

“I dreamed you were dead.” Sam blurts in a strangely hoarse voice, and his partner tenses up again with a very, very quiet gasp, just the sound of air whistling past shark teeth in one sharp inhale. He’d been hoping for an answer, of course, but he didn’t want _that_ one.

The next half-hour is like pulling teeth, but a lot less fun. Sam does his best not to break down, quietly and slowly relaying what had happened in those final days of his original Max’s life, and that brief, terrifying gap of time after his passing, before the elevator arrived, in much more detail than he ever had previously—not just what physically happened, but how awful and hopeless and empty and _sad_ it had been. And he confesses to the nightmare plaguing him ever since then, too. Retracing his steps, reliving what may as well be the worst moment of his life. That’s all he can manage, but he hadn’t even realized how desperate he really was to unload that baggage to someone he trusts—and Max is the only one he truly, deeply trusts, the only one he ever has and probably the only one he ever will. Max stays unusually quiet and still the entire time, just patting Sam’s arm every now and then when he gets to the brink of tears again, a small gesture that does an awful lot more than you’d think. When he’s finally done, Sam just shuts his mouth, taking a deep breath; getting it off his chest felt good in a way, almost liberating or something, but nearly the moment he’s done talking he regrets it. He’s definitely said too much. They never talk about things like this, and for good reason, too—he still doesn’t really _know_ the range of Max’s emotions, and if he could ever understand something like a deep, _heavy_ sadness. He can’t remember the last time he saw the lagomorph cry from any emotion other than the glee of laughing at someone else’s suffering.

“Y’know Sam, you’re too much of a softie for your own good.” Max says kindly, interrupting his thoughts and reaching up to pat Sam’s cheek. The dog looks down at him in confusion, almost a little hurt. His partner smiles back at him. “I’m not dead anymore, lughead! Don’t worry about it!” He wriggles up a bit to be on the same level as Sam’s head, so he can look him in the eyes properly. 

“But what if it happens _again_?” Sam blurts. The very thought sends a shiver down his spine. This Max never developed psychic powers and maybe he never will—but _what if he_ _does_? 

“I _told_ you I’m gonna drag you down with me when I die, and I meant it!” Max replies indignantly, and something in that phrase sparks a recognition of some kind in Sam’s head.

“I—…” Sam furrows his brow for a second until something dawns on him and his face goes slack, a chill consuming him. When he speaks again his voice is hollow. “But you didn’t. You didn’t, when you died. You could’ve taken out the whole of New York, including me, in one fantastical explosion, but you—you locked eyes with me, and, and… and waved goodbye…” His voice had begun strong but grew quieter and more broken with every word as his mounting horror became overwhelming. “Why…?”

Max looks uncomfortable, smile wavering unsteadily, and it takes him much too long to think of a response. “You’re thinking too much,” he deflects uncomfortably, for lack of the proper words to express just why he’d never really be able to kill (or maim) Sam. “You sh—”

“ **No** , Max,” Sam snaps, letting go of him and sitting up. It still feels like too much, everything is too much, and so many different conflicting things about all of this keep rattling around his head—talking about it didn’t help anything, just stirred everything back up. He’s a detective. There’s a puzzle to solve; his brain won’t let it go and he can’t force it to. “I can’t keep ignoring this, I just—I _can’t_.” He rubs his eyes, tired and frustrated and before he can stop it the question that’s been resting heavily on his shoulder like a particularly iresome parrot, squawking at every too-intimate moment between the two, slips out of his mouth in a growl. “The hell even _are_ we, Max?”

A sick sort of uneasiness settles in Max’s stomach. “...What do you mean, Sam?” Virtually the second he starts talking he doesn’t want to finish the question, but it slips out before his throat closes up.

“You know what I mean.” His tone is almost accusatory and it makes Max’s skin crawl. The dog can’t help but let some semblance of bitterness bleed into his voice even though it isn’t _Max_ he’s frustrated at, per se. He just can’t stop himself. Ever since **_it_ ** happened he’s been sitting on a sort of poisonous sense of… of _frustration_ , he supposes, at himself, at Max (if only a little…), at _everything_ that happened and how it brought to his attention so many messy, ugly feelings. And he’s in a messy, ugly mood and before he can even stop himself the words are clawing their way from the cage in his chest out through his mouth, “I had to let you die and it destroyed me for weeks, but you had to kill me and it’s like it didn’t even matter—”

Max tries to interject even though Sam doesn’t stop talking, “That’s not true—”

“—not going to just **brush it off** , I can’t, not _this_.” He can’t stop himself. Something pent-up in him has snapped and he hardly even sounds like him anymore but _he can’t stop._

“We die _all the time_!” Max protests. “Remember when we were zombies?”

“But this was **different**!” Sam is yelling now, finally looking at Max, and the look in his eyes sends a cold wave of something unknown-to-Max down the lagomorph’s spine. “This time you didn’t **come back** —”

“I’m **right here**!” Max hates himself for the **_needy_ ** tone in his voice. The **_desperation_**.

“But it isn’t _really_ y—”

“Don’t say it, Sam.” Max snaps sharply, hiding his terror under a thin veneer of false outrage. He can kid himself into thinking his trembling is out of fury, not the deep, nerve-wracking, bone-melting horror of what he just almost heard. “Just **_don’t_**!”

A silence falls and the energy shifts again, as abruptly as before. Sam’s eyes are dark and sad and it’s awful, so out of place on him. His heart sinks as he comes back to his senses, feeling even worse now that he’s let it slip—Hell, it didn’t _slip_ out, it _barrelled_ out, the same way they crash into the Sub-Basement of Solitude when they’re keen to get inside. “I’m sorry, Max, I don’t… I didn’t mean…”

“It’s fine.” It’s clearly not fine. His voice is strained and he’s not looking at his partner, shivering slightly for unknown reasons. Sam sighs, resting his head in his hands. He didn’t mean it, he really didn’t, and he doesn’t want this. A long, vile silence follows, broken only when Max growls, “It **did** matter, Sam. It mattered so much I beat up three helpless Mariachis and punched the shit out of an elevator until it’d take me back to you. I didn’t even care if it blew up and killed me. I didn’t even care if you didn’t want to see me again, I just didn’t want to live in a world where you… where you **weren’t there**.” He finally looks back at Sam, glaring, paws balled into fists beside him. “Everything hurt me, **too** , idiot.”

It takes Sam too long to find his voice. “...It did?”

“Of course it did,” he snaps. “I—You’re mo… You’re my _best friend_.” The anger and fear are fading now and his voice is weaker, threatening to crack. He crosses his arms, glancing away again. “This is stupid, Sam. I just want to _forget_ it.” He gets up, moving to hop off the bed.

“Please don’t go,” Sam blurts impulsively, and Max hesitates. Even after all that, he doesn’t _really_ want to go back to his bunk, but he doesn’t want to stay put—where the hell do they go from here? 

The lagomorph slumps for a moment. The silence is deafening. He sits back down, just letting his knees give out, plopping down right where he had been standing. He feels a large paw gently cup his head, and he shuts his eyes, wishing it still felt fitting, like a glove. But it doesn’t. It feels too rough and shaky now.

“I’m so sorry.” Sam’s whisper nearly breaks him and Max turns. He gets it, really he does. They’re tired, emotionally wrung-out, and sometimes latent lurking emotions end up expressed tactlessly, improperly, with far more barbs than ever intended. It still hurts, though. He knows beneath all the disastrous decorum, there’s a singular grain of truth. In some ways, Sam really does see him as not-him. 

“It’s okay.” It’s just one lie of many but he doesn’t want to fight. Doesn’t want this to ruin their partnership, not after he fought so hard to salvage it. He can keep trying even if it hurts. “Listen, Sam,” he sighs, grimacing at what he’s going to say, knowing it’s going to be embarrassing even if he’s not saying _everything_ he wishes he could, “I… I don’t know how to deal with this, either. I know I can’t ignore it forever, but it feels better than thinking about it. I’m only good at avoiding things until _you_ win the fight, after all,” he cracks a smile but Sam can’t seem to share it. It falls from Max’s face as well, faux cheer leaving his voice to be replaced with a hollow emptiness. “I get it. I’m _not_ your Max and you’re _not_ my Sam and that’ll _never_ _change_. Maybe this will never be good enough for you, and that’s fine, but…” The words _but I still love you even if it isn’t ‘you’_ are right on the tip of his tongue but he can’t. He just can’t let himself say it. It would only deepen the rift, if not just right now then, at any time. No sense letting stupid, unrequited emotions drive a wedge further between him and the one person he’s ever cared about. “It’s… it’s enough for me.”

Sam whines, suddenly leaning forward to scoop Max into his arms again. “No, no, no, Max, I’m so sorry—You _are_ good enough, this _is_ enough,” he starts to ramble on, the way he does when his brain is moving much too quickly for his mouth, or for his conscience to catch up with him and stifle it, and the fact that that’s stayed the same is oddly comforting to Max. “I never want to make you feel that way, little pal.” The lagomorph relaxes, leaning into the hug, and just shuts his eyes, face buried in his partner’s chest. He can almost kid himself that what he has with _this_ Sam is the same as what he had with _his_ Sam. Even though it isn’t. Even though it looks like it may never be. “I just— _I’m so sorry_ —It still feels—” 

When the chattering apologies grow completely incoherent, Max lifts his head finally and smacks Sam (gently) upside the head. “Shut up. It’s alright.” Despite the abrasive wording his tone is sweeter than normal, and Sam doesn’t take offense, just shuts up as told to, squeezing Max closer for a moment in a silent response. “This will,” he pauses when his voice fails him— _don’t cry, dammit, don’t cry_ —then tries again, “It’ll go away, eventually.” He wishes he were only talking about Sam’s pain. 

Sam doesn’t say anything, and Max silently listens to the even tempo of his partner’s heartbeat. The air lightens. Somehow it feels a bit better to have it out in the open. Off their chests, or whatever. At least, by Sam’s perception. 

“You’re right, Max.” He squeezes the lagomorph close and, to his surprise, Max leans further into it, as opposed to staying stiff like he usually would. Or maybe that was the old Max. “You’re right that it’ll fade in time. Getting there’s the hard part, I guess.”

Max seems to contemplate that deeply for a moment before murmuring out a, “Yeah, I guess so.” He’s not thinking of Sam when he says it. He closes his eyes for a moment, letting his head rest on his partner’s chest, again reminding himself that the heartbeat he hears isn’t about to go anywhere anytime soon. He stays there, mute, for a long while before remarking, “We should get back to sleep.” 

“Right.”

They don’t move.


	2. Troubles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURPRISE! part two  
> i didn't plan this at all if you can't tell but it's another one-shot (i guess???) that takes place in the same narrative as whatever this was. is. enjoy!
> 
> spoiler alert, it's actually happier.  
> .....and prolly out-of-character honestly :')

“Things just still don’t feel right,” Sam finally admits in a mumble. 

The duo are sitting on their couch, in the house they sort-of-stole and still haven’t been evicted from, with Sam’s head resting somewhat-comfortably in Max’s lap. The lagomorph’s knees are kind of knobbly and the weight of Sam’s head is cutting off circulation so Max keeps kicking his feet, which if done too fast gives Sam motion sickness from jostling his head too much; it’s a careful balance but one they’ve mastered quite well by this point. The dogtective’s coat is draped over him like a blanket, as he’d taken it off earlier due to being too hot but then a half-hour later felt much too cold to keep it off entirely; his hat rests on Max’s head because the lagomorph stole it earlier to expose the wiry strands of… longer fur? Hair? Curling up from Sam’s head in an amusingly cartoonish manner. He’d been petting and rubbing at Sam’s head and ears to soothe him while the dog thought deeply for a while. 

It’s something they do rarely—settling down to think for a minute. But Sam had been in a funk for a few weeks now and truth be told, Max felt a little _off_ too, even if he never said anything about it. So they’d decided it was time for a discussion of sorts—decided without saying so, of course, instead just instinctively Knowing that now was the time.

Max looks down at him, pausing in the scalp-massage he’d been doling out. “What do you mean?” Sam glances up at Max and half-opens his mouth but can’t manage more than a little noise as his voice dies immediately, odd look in his eyes. It gives Max a little trepidation. He doesn’t recognize the emotion but he can see the thin trace of pain in it and that troubles him greatly. Max snakes one arm under Sam’s chin to sort-of hug his head. “Please tell me.” He doesn’t even realize he’s said it out loud in an alarmingly quiet voice until he sees Sam’s eyebrow twitch with barely-concealed surprise, and he clamps his mouth shut as a tidal wave of white-hot embarrassment sweeps across his face. 

“You. Uh.” Sam starts, then stops himself, and that strange light to his eyes seems to finally spread across his face. It looks similar to discomfort, but with some sort of different edge to it—something new. And while Max is not in the mood for new things, he realizes some part of it looks like an expression on _his_ Sam’s face from events that, if _this_ Sam’s general demeanor is ‘normal,’ never happened here. “Max,” Sam finally seems to figure out what to say. 

Max’s stomach flips. “Yeah?”

“You… know I, uh, care about you a… a fair bit, right?” He looks down at his paws and starts fiddling with them, twisting one finger in those of his other hand. A telltale nervous tic from way-back-when. Where had Max seen that before? “And I—Uh. Hm.” He furrows his brow. Max waits impatiently, kneading part of Sam’s ear between his thumb and forefinger in anxiety. If the dog notices, he says nothing, until, “I’ve been wanting to ask just what…” He clears his throat, “...just how, er, _close_ were… you and your Sam?” 

Max may as well be made of ice. He doesn’t even realize he isn’t breathing anymore, just staring down at Sam (who is avoiding his gaze) with a locked-jaw anxious grin and wide eyes. He lets out a peal of nervous laughter and it sounds alarmingly hollow; Sam’s eyes snap up to his face in concern as he brays, “We’ve always been partners in fighting crime, Sam, come on!”

Sam studies him for a moment, eyes shifting across Max’s entire face and even up to his ears. Finally he slowly, quietly replies, “I just feel like there’s… something-or-other you aren’t telling me.”

The only word to describe how that makes Max feel is _caught_. Well, _caught_ and all of its synonyms, but, you know. It must show on his face—maybe in his wobbling smile threatening to fall, maybe in the sweat beading on his brow, maybe in the twitching of his ears—because Sam’s brow furrows again but this time in worry.

He’s suddenly aware of just how _close_ he and Sam are _right now_ , in this moment, the dog’s head in his hands and his nose only a few inches away from Max’s face and it suddenly is all way, way too much to be thinking about in the light of how strange everything has been. The word falls out of his mouth before he can stop himself because he’s just been so desperate to try and untangle it all and the only person he can trust is Sam and, screw it, obviously he’s not good at acting like everything's a-okay anyways. 

“Engaged.”

Sam’s ears fly up off his head and his mouth drops open like he’s going to say something but Max can’t stop talking now. It’s like every moment he’d suddenly gone quiet and every time he’d been about to say something but changed his mind had been stored up in him and now that the can of worms was opened, the confetti wouldn’t stop pouring out. “We were engaged for around three months before he—before I killed him—we were gonna go someplace or something and it was gonna be huge and extravagant and _amazing_ but work kept getting in the way but that was _fine_ , we both love work, we both love our _mayhem-for-pay_ but it all kept piling up and then— **and then** —” His face is wet and _is he crying?_ He never cries. He doesn’t. He can’t. 

He doesn’t even realize he’s spaced out until he comes to with Sam’s arms around him. The dog is sitting up on the couch now, coat only on his feet, back against the armrest, murmuring reassurances Max can’t process at the moment. After a long while of Sam petting him, cradling him in his arms, practically entirely curled around him, Max finally calms down, feeling much lighter now, even with a pit of dread still in his stomach. “I’m so sorry,” Sam says almost hoarsely and Max realizes they’d lapsed into silence for a moment before that. “I had no idea.”

“Yeah,” Max laughs joylessly, “it was pretty clear. You and _your_ Max weren’t… _like that_ , were you?” 

Silence again for a heartbeat, and then, “I’d always thought y— _he_ wasn’t… capable. Of that.”

Gears turn in Max’s head for a moment and then he slowly pulls back to look at Sam’s face. The dog lets go of him reluctantly but won’t meet his eyes. For once in his life Max thinks carefully before he opens his mouth. “If he were,” he begins eventually, “would you have been…?” 

Sam finally looks back at him and his eyes are conflicted. “No way to know.” He says simply with a half-shrug, like his shoulders are too heavy to properly shrug. “I never had the guts—It never… felt like the right time.” He has to push aside how strange it is to essentially be telling, point-blank, this anxiety right to the man (rabbit?) who, technically, caused it just by existing. Though, obviously, Sam’s feelings aren’t and never have been Max’s _fault_ , but in any case—It was a strange situation. He’d always figured he’d carry it to his grave, after all. But here they were—this other Max had been engaged to his Sam. _Engaged_. That implied both that the other Sam hadn’t been a _coward_ , and, _this Max reciprocated_. Sam hadn't realized he could feel envious of himself (albeit a parallel version of himself) and yet here he is. 

Max looks down. “Huh.” 

A long moment passes. They can hear a clock ticking someplace else in the house, it’s so quiet. For once, their T.V. is off, and nothing else in the house is making noise; even the outdoors seems to be holding its breath, waiting for some kind of resolution. Max sits in Sam’s lap and stares at the loosened blue-and-black tie, thinking about how it had felt when, in his world, he slid it carefully off the lifeless form of _his_ Sam before wrapping it around his own neck in a vain attempt to feel like the dog was still with him while he’d searched for his brain… But he can see the dress shirt behind it shift a little with his partner’s breathing, and he knows this is different. This Sam is alive, this Sam wasn’t engaged to him (or _anyone_ evidently), yet clearly he’d _wanted_ to be. He wondered what the other _him_ was like. Colder, he supposed, if Sam didn’t know how loved he was. The thought that maybe the other him _hadn’t_ loved Sam had crossed his mind before but he always pushed it away; there was no way. The state of Max was, in his mind, that he was eternally tethered to Sam. A Sam. Any Sam. Whatever Sam he could call his. Clearly if the other Max had stayed, he felt the same, maybe on some level he wasn’t willing to approach yet. Truth be told, in his own world, it had taken Sam—his Sam—asking him for him to realize how he’d really felt, which was funny, considering he always thought himself to be so in-tune with his own emotions, but clearly he’d missed one. Until his partner found it.

And he finally knows what to say.

“I don’t know if it means anything, but,” Max looks back up, “I’d… I’ve never pictured anyone else in my life but you, platonically or otherwise. And _that_ feels too… too _big_ to be different.”

“I’d argue being engaged is pretty big,” Sam points out with a little puzzled frown.

“No,” Max says simply. “That felt like…” He waves one hand through the air, “...a natural progression. It was supposed to happen. Always, eventually.”

Sam, never knowing what to do with professions of heartfelt emotion, tries to lighten the mood a little. “Gee, little buddy, you’re being awfully verbose.” He lifts a paw to pat Max’s head. “Guess you really mean it.”

“I always have,” he blurts without thinking, and then Sam laughs and the whole room feels three shades brighter. 

“Well,” Sam starts, then coughs a little, red hues peeking out from the fur on his cheeks, “I can’t promise it’ll be the same as before, but… if you’re willing to try again—”

Max doesn’t even let him finish. “Yes!” he cheers, springing to his feet to grab Sam by the jowls. “Yes! Yes!” 

“A-Alright, relax!” Sam gently tugs him away from his face, but Max doesn’t stop grinning even as he lets go, allowing himself to be pulled off Sam’s lap and put on the couch. “We… We’ll, uh, date for a while, and… see how it goes.” He continues a little awkwardly, unsure of what to say. It already feels so odd to say the word _date_ and it's definitely going to be strange going forward, given it's a first for Sam but a second for Max.

“Psh, it’ll go _great_!” Max flaps one hand with a sneer. “It’s us, after all. I tore through time and space for you. We’re practically **soulmates** , baby!”

Sam laughs again and turns a little more red. “You may have a point there, little buddy.” 


End file.
